The Spectator

Barometer | 1 October 2011

issue 01 October 2011

Up in smoke

A coroner in Galway has passed a verdict of spontaneous human combustion on a 76-year-old pensioner whose body was found burned in a house otherwise largely undamaged by fire.
Not everyone will be convinced, however — any more than they were in 1763, when Jonas Dupont published De Incendis Corporis Humani Spontaneis, an account of numerous deaths attributed to the phenomenon.

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